British Selection Race 2, Lake Placid 2009

2nd place today means, joint first in Selection Points, BUT on count back I'm 0.58 sec behind Andy Wood, so after our international training in Whistler as part of the Olympic preparation next week, he goes to World Cup (WC) and I to Intercontinental Cup (ICC). Sorry kids, this means you won't see me on British Eurosport till after Xmas depending on race results!
I'm pretty gutted, and it definitely feels like a blow to my Olympic hopes, but there is often a silver lining to these occurrences. If I let the negative connotations of this result take hold it can only have negative results - on the other hand I'm on a competitive circuit that will give me a World Ranking that I can still qualify for the Olympics with! Don't forget Adam Pengilly struggled last year and was on ICC until qualifying for the World Champs where he won a silver medal!
I'm going to go forward and compete without fear of failure and keep in mind the big scheme of things, like this sunset I saw at Anchor Point in Morocco this summer - waves are still breaking dude! Vancouver is still there for the taking!

British Selection Race 1, Lake Placid 2009

First place by 0.01 second! This race was real pressure and pure performance! Every bit of experience from the last 12 years of decathlon competition, training with the Marine's (as per the photos) and gems of advice from the people I've met along the way contributed to this result, as it will the rest of my season.
You learn from your past experiences, you hope for your future, but all you can affect is that one little second where you get the chance to perform! The next few months are full of those opportunities for me, and I'm so pleased to be in this position. The end result of my endeavors will form in time, meanwhile I will do all in my control to get to Vancouver 2010, starting with next weeks second Selection race on the same track!

Cesana Drama!

On the day the whole British team were scheduled to fly to Cesana, Italy for our first Selection race, the track had to cancel sliding for all nations as their refridgeration broke down meaning there was no ice on parts of the track! Reportedly one local hotel lost €200,000 as teams relocated themselves to other tracks! Skeleton, Bobsleigh and Luge really does contribute to the local business' every winter season! So we have done a weeks training and testing of our equipment in Winterberg, Germany and have set out early for Lake Placid, where it is snowing already! We'll have two Selection races here to decide who goes to World Cup and Intercontinental Cup for the first half of the season up until X-Mas.
BEHOLD my shiny new helmet! I spent some time in the summer learning how to airbrush this British flag design on the front, and a white Patriarchal cross on the top and back, which is the Boggis race colours (a thankyou to my girlfriends parents for their support over the past couple of summers!)
I'll keep you updated on the race results, which will also be posted on my website antsawyer.com